Hi everyone, I am the most naive person you will ever meet. My naivety, at this point, is absolutely sickening to me. I am tired of getting smitten by sweet words, and believing people so easily which is why I am requesting for recommendations on books that will teach me tricks that conman and salesman and in general people with low ethics use to get what they want, the way they want. Thanks much for helping me being a bit more cleaver!
by Own-Information-8108
3 Comments
{{Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker}} will help you listen to your instincts more.
{{Becoming Bulletproof by Evy Poumpouras}} is about stopping conmen
Not proud of this but I used to work in a sales boiler room where the goal was always to get to “yes” as quickly as possible. I got a lot of useful strategies from **Influence: Science and Practice** by Robert Cialdini. It explained six deeply manipulative phychological shortcuts to build artificial urgency into your pitch (reciprocity, scarcity, authority, consistency, likability, social proof).
When I became a manager I had all my reports read it – both because it was helpful to me AND because the book has two versions. One version is a straight-up book with a lot of scientific backstory explaining why these are effective tactics. The other version is lighter on the background science but told in a really cool comic strip form! The comic book version still has all the info needed to learn how to use the techniques yourself, but is a pretty entertaining and fast read.
I read both and recommend both, but you could start w the comic version and then if you’re really interested in the underlying social science, you could pick up the other.